Saturday, October 29, 2011

New York-based Human Rights Watch recently conducted interviews in six of South Africa's nine provinces and concluded: "Social attitudes towards homosexual, bisexual, and transgender people in South Africa have possibly hardened over the last two decades. The abuse they face on an everyday basis may be verbal, physical, or sexual - and may even result in murder." The group added: "This is a far cry from the promise of equality and non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation contained in the country's constitution." Most known victims are poor and black and so are the perpetrators, prompting many to ask how a people who fought against discrimination during apartheid can now treat some of its most vulnerable in such a violent manner. Siphokazi Mthathi, South African director at Human Rights Watch, said: "We've failed to make it understood that there is a price for rape. Sexism is still deeply embedded here. There is still a strong sense among men that they have power over women, women's bodies and there's also a strong sense that there's not going to be consequences because most often there are no consequences." Interpol estimates that half of South African women will be raped in their lifetime. But corrective rape - i.e. the rape of lesbians in the belief that it will make them heterosexual - is not even recognized as a hate crime and rights groups say few victims report their cases to the police. In many African countries being gay is illegal.

The investigation alleges that Muslim students must perform their prayers surrounded by symbols of Catholicism – e.g., a wooden crucifix, paintings of Jesus, pictures of priests and theologians which many Muslim students find inappropriate. A spokesperson for the Office of Human Rights said that they had received a 60-page complaint against the private university. The investigation, they said, could take as long a six months.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

More than half of those charged with offenses were from a black or ethnic minority background, compared with 42% who were white, Ministry of Justice figures have shown. In some areas of England, the proportion of black rioters was more than five times the local population. In terms of ethnicity, 46% of those appearing in court were from black or mixed black backgrounds, 42% were white and 7% were Asian. In Haringey, north London, Nottingham, and Birmingham – three key scenes of the disturbances – the proportion of those brought before the courts over the riots who were white was significantly lower, and those from a black and mixed black background significantly higher, than the proportion in the resident population. In addition, 1 in 7 of the rioters jailed was a foreign national. Foreign looters from 44 countries have been locked up over the riots which scarred England in August 2011. Robbers, vandals and thugs from as far afield as Afghanistan, Cuba, Ethiopia and Samoa joined in as shops were plundered and businesses set ablaze, causing millions of pounds worth of damage. The sheer number from different corners of the globe who took part in the mayhem is one of the strongest indicators yet that the riots had nothing to do with political protest or civil unrest, but was born of greed and opportunist criminality. Prison statistics revealed that 14% – about one in seven – of those jailed for burglary, robbery, theft, criminal damage and disorder during the riots were born abroad. But the true number could be even higher as at least 4% of those remanded in custody refused to tell police their nationality. Jamaicans represented the largest group of foreign inmates, followed by Somali and Polish offenders. The list also included those from Colombia, Iraq, Congo, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. One in four of those jailed for robbery were born abroad, as were one in ten convicted for violent disorder or other disorder offenses such as possession of a knife or drugs.

Police say that there have been a total of five sex attacks in the last few weeks and they are still investigating whether the same teen is connected to the other attacks. It’s not clear if the teen charged is the same person caught by security cameras after an assault outside Queens Village recently, or if he resembles sketches of suspects released by police. The suspect — identified only as a Springfield Gardens resident because he is a minor — was charged in separate incidents that occurred in the Laurelton section recently. The victims in both attacks were hit in the head. The teenage suspect has been charged with 2 counts of attempted rape, 1 count of attempted sex abuse, 1 count of sex abuse and assault.

The report, published jointly with the youth justice board, shows that the proportion of black and other minority ethnic young men in young offender institutions (YOIs) has risen from 23% in 2006 and 33% in 2009/10 to 39% last year. The changing demographic profile of the population inside youth jails in England and Wales also shows an increasing proportion of young Muslims, up from 13% last year to 16% this year. Foreign national young men account for a record 6% of the population. Between 2007 and 2011 there was a 37% reduction in white children in custody, compared with a 16% reduction in black and ethnic minority children.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

The group, The Call to Islam, belongs to a branch of Islam called Salafism, whose followers in Britain attempted to introduce similar Sharia zones in London in the summer of 2011. The group is led by the imam Abu Ahmed, who has taught several people subsequently linked to terrorist activities. The Call to Islam intends to start patrolling the Copenhagen neighborhood of Tingbjerg before extending into Nørrebro and eventually the whole of Denmark. Muslims found to be drinking and gambling would be reprimanded for breaking Islamic code.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Jobs told Obama in a meeting in 2010 that the White House needed to be more friendly toward business. Jobs also told Obama that regulations and unnecessary costs put the United States at a competitive disadvantage with China, where companies can build factories more cheaply.

African-American Richard Jones, 26, can be seen on CCTV getting out of his car and running towards the bar brandishing the high-powered weapon. He appears to struggle to get into the bar in Philadelphia so opens fire, with one shot hitting the side of the building and the other firing into the door. The black shooter then ran off down the street to catch his car - which had rolled away after he mistakenly put it in reverse instead of park, smashing the door. The suspect also fired one shot at police officers who were on patrol and tried to apprehend him. The shooter then broke into a woman's home a short distance away and terrorized her before heading to the nearby Lafayette Hills, where his car broke down. The suspect tossed the high-powered weapon into a garden to try to get rid of the evidence. Police recovered the gun which was fully loaded and capable of causing a tremendous amount of damage. It is thought that Jones then called someone for help and managed to get his car started. Police have yet to work out a motive for his crime but have described him as armed and dangerous.

After the verdicts, one of the women, Amina Farah Ali, told the judge through an interpreter that she was happy because she was going to heaven no matter what, and condemned those in authority, saying that they would go to hell. She was ordered into custody pending her sentencing. Ali, 35, and Hawo Mohamed Hassan, 64, were each charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Ali also faced 12 counts of providing such support, for sending more than $8,600 to al-Shabab from September 2008 through July 2009, while Hassan faced two counts of lying to the FBI. Both were found guilty on all counts. The terrorism-related counts each carry up to 15 years in prison, while lying to the FBI carries up to eight years. The women, both U.S. citizens of Somali descent, were among 20 people charged in Minnesota's long-running federal investigations into recruiting and financing for al-Shabab, an Islamic terrorist group with ties to al Qaeda. Investigators say that at least 21 men left Minnesota — home to the country's largest Somali community — to join al-Shabab.

With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland. Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department's $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the company's manufacturing jobs are still limited to the assembly of the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car in Finland.

While the national unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.1%, and rates for whites and Hispanics did not budge, black unemployment declined to 16.0%, from 16.7% in August 2011. Black job gains came despite sizable reductions in state and local government and manufacturing employment — sectors that employ a disproportionate number of African Americans. Compared to other groups, whites were the biggest losers. In September 2011, they gained jobs at about one-third the national rate and only 6% of the black rate. Even so, black unemployment is still twice the white rate and the gap would be still larger if the million or so blacks incarcerated in prisons and jails — 4.8% of the black male population — were counted in the labor force. From January 2009 to September 2011, both whites and blacks suffered employment declines: black employment fell by 272,000, or 1.8% and white employment fell by 2.0 million, or 1.7%. By contrast, Asian employment grew by 123,000, or 1.9%, and Hispanic employment grew by 558,000, or 2.8%, since the start of the Obama years.

The cost could exceed $300,000 if he's able to secure a kidney early in his sentence, including the price of the transplant and a decade's worth of post-operative therapy. At Rajaratnam's sentencing in New York, federal Judge Richard Holwell described the former hedge fund manager as a diabetic with "imminent kidney failure" who needed a transplant. The judge also said that he will ask the Federal Bureau of Prisons to place Rajaratnam in the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina, which has a medical facility. Incidentally, Butner is home to Jewish convict Bernard Madoff, who is serving a 150-year sentence.

African American women are less likely to develop GDM during pregnancy. But for those who were diagnosed of having GDM, their future overt diabetes risk is the greatest among all race/ethnic groups. Although Asian/Pacific Islander women are much more likely to develop GDM than African American or non-Hispanic white women, their future diabetes risk after GDM is similar to that for non-Hispanic white women. "Race and ethnicity should be considered among the risk factors for type 2 diabetes when physicians and nurses counsel women about their risk of developing diabetes after a pregnancy complicated by GDM," said Anny H. Xiang, a senior research scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Department of Research & Evaluation in Pasadena, Calif. African American women who develop GDM have the highest risk of developing overt diabetes in the future in comparison to women from other racial and ethnic groups. For African American women, their risk of developing diabetes was almost 10 times greater if they had developed GDM during a past pregnancy than if they did not develop GDM. In comparison, the relative risks were 6.5 times greater for non-Hispanic White women, 7.7 times greater for Hispanic women, and 6.3 times greater in Asian/Pacific Islander women. GDM is defined as glucose intolerance that typically occurs during the second or third trimester and most prevalent in Asian/Pacific Islanders (17%) and least prevalent in African American women (7%). GDM can lead to complications such as early delivery and cesarean delivery and increases the baby's risk of developing diabetes, obesity and metabolic disease later in life. GDM typically goes away after pregnancy but risk of overt diabetes in the future is a concern. The research shows that prevention messages, while important to all women who develop GDM, are particularly important for African American women.

The research also shows that compared to whites, African Americans are at greater risk to develop OA in the knee joint but are less likely to be affected by OA in the hand. Researchers discovered that compared with whites, African Americans had substantially less frequent OA in the joints of the fingertip (distal interphalangeal), either just in the finger tips or also in other joints of the hand. African Americans were also potentially at double the risk of having osteoarthritis in their knee (TFJ) compared with whites and had a 77% greater likelihood of having OA in both their knee and spine. Racial differences in OA phenotypes were more significant than gender disparity. The findings suggest a substantial health burden of large-joint OA, particularly hip and spine, among African Americans.

Adolph Cameron, head of the Jamaican Teachers' Association, said that many boys perform poorly because they fear that appearing studious undermines their masculinity. He claimed that many youngsters turn to a so-called “hustle culture” to make money, rather than chasing careers built on academic achievement and hard work. Cameron warned that the attitude was affecting the academic standards of Afro-Caribbean boys both in Jamaica and in Britain. They are one of England's worst-performing ethnic groups in schools. In 2010, just 40% of Afro-Caribbean boys achieved five good GCSEs including English and math, compared with the national average of 58.5%. Cameron said: "That notion of masculinity says that if as a male you aspire to perform highly it means you are feminine, even to the extent of saying you are gay. But in the context of Jamaica, which is so homophobic, male students don't want to be categorized in that way so that they would deliberately under-perform in order that they are not." In a lecture at an event in Bristol aimed at promoting the educational achievement of black boys and sponsored by the National Union of Teachers, Cameron said that in Jamaica, boys were at least 10 percentage points behind girls in national tests.

As a part of the study, 11th graders were evaluated on proficiency in math. The report says that only 19% of African American students met or exceeded standards in math. Only 20% of Native Americans and 29% of Hispanic students were proficient. Students from migrant families fared the worst at 17%. That compares to a 69% proficiency rate for white Nebraska students in math.

At least one of the African-American attackers used a rock to hit him, causing deep cuts above his eyes. They all kicked and punched him while he was on the ground, conscious the entire time. Jim Shea spent four hours at Chestnut Hill Hospital, getting stitches in his face - from his eyelid to his cheek - and treatment for two large scrapes on his leg and elbow. Two bones in his nose were also broken.

Michael Bloomberg said that gender segregation on public buses is not permitted and called the bus in Brooklyn an outrage. From the outside the B110 might look like any other bus - but on the inside revelations about its seating arrangements are causing huge controversy. The unusual practice has only come to light after a woman told a student newspaper that other riders said she had to leave the front and sit in the back. The B110 has been operated by the Private Transportation Corporation for 38 years under a city franchise. The bus costs $2.50 to ride and it is out of action on Friday night and most of Saturday. There are 165,000 Hasidic Jews in New York, with the majority of them living in Brooklyn, and they follow strict religious rules. They are not allowed to sit with people of the opposite sex who are not their spouse.

Juliette Dunn, 29, has accepted charges of risk of injury to a child under the Alford Doctrine, where the defendant doesn't agree to the facts but agrees the state has enough evidence to win a conviction. Her co-accused, 33-year-old fellow African-American Lisa Jefferson, pleaded guilty to the same charges. Dunn was arrested after she was seen ordering her son to chug a 40-ounce bottle of beer in a public park and officers found a baby bottle that smelt of alcohol next to her daughter. When questioned by social workers, the four-year-old boy said that he liked Natural Ice beer and Budweiser, but does not like the taste of Dog-Bite beer. Authorities took both children to a hospital to be tested for drugs and alcohol. The son tested positive for alcohol and the daughter for alcohol and cocaine. Dunn has admitted to giving her son a bottle of beer every day. Dunn said that she did not know how her ten-month-old daughter tested positive for cocaine as she does not breast feed her.

And what's more, it becomes more pronounced the older they get. Boise State University found in a group of 484 heterosexual women, 60% were sexually attracted to other women; 45% had kissed a woman, and 50% had fantasies about the same sex. Other data suggests that upwards of 20% of women are attracted to other women.

More than 4 million people in Britain were born abroad, 6.6% of the population of 63 million. Germany has the largest number of foreign-born citizens in Europe, with 7.2 million, followed by Spain, with 5.2 million. Opinion polls consistently have shown that the British public favors a reduction in immigration. A recent poll from the nonpartisan Migration Observatory at Oxford University found that 69% of respondents want immigration reduced, an amount consistent with surveys conducted over the past 50 years. Even politicians now concede that immigration is a major problem. British political leaders from the left and the right are blaming liberal immigration policies for driving down living standards amid a financial crisis that has prompted the Conservative-led government to cut welfare programs to prevent fiscal collapse. Prime Minister David Cameron, who said in 2011 that multiculturalism has failed in Britain, is calling on immigrants to learn English fluently, make a contribution to the economy and society and avoid being a burden on the welfare system and the British taxpayer. Even Labor Party leader Ed Miliband recently conceded that his party got things wrong on immigration during its 13 years in power.

Data from 137,618 black and white assault victims over the age of 15 treated at 100 trauma centers between 2005 and 2008 found that the overall death rate for blacks was higher than for whites, 8.9% compared to 5.1%. Blacks account for 76% of all trauma center deaths which probably has a lot to do with the high rate of violent crime in the African-American community.

Steve Sailer reviews Pat Buchanan's new book Suicide of a Superpower: Buchanan wants a moratorium on new immigration until unemployment falls to 6%. He points out that to bring in foreign workers when 23 million Americans are still underemployed or out of work is to put corporate profits ahead of country. In addition, he wants to reform legal immigration in the long run to bring in those who are most easily assimilated. An interesting point that he makes is that in 2008, John McCain won only 45% of the Catholic vote, which comprised 27% of the electorate. If Republicans can raise their 2012 nominee's share of the Catholic vote from 45% to 52% that seven-point gain would add more votes than going from 20% of the Jewish vote to 100%. Another interesting fact that Buchanan points out is that polls show that young people, a demographic that Republicans lost badly in 2008, are more highly averse to affirmative action than are older voters. Therefore, coming out against racial quotas may be a good way for the GOP to win over young white voters.

Despite frosty relations with the titans of Wall Street, Obama has still managed to raise far more money in 2011 from the financial and banking sector than Mitt Romney or any other Republican presidential candidate, according to new fundraising data. Obama has brought in more money from employees of banks, hedge funds and other financial service companies than all of the GOP candidates combined, according to a Washington Post analysis of contribution data. The numbers show that Obama retains a persistent reservoir of support among Democratic financiers who have backed him since he was an underdog presidential candidate in 2007. Obama’s fundraising advantage is clear in the case of Bain Capital, the Boston-based private-equity firm that was co-founded by Romney, and where the Republican made his fortune. Not surprisingly, Romney has strong support at the firm, raking in $34,000 from 18 Bain employees, according to the analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics. But Obama has outdone Romney on his own turf, collecting $76,600 from Bain Capital employees through September 2011 — and he needed only three donors to do it. In response to the OWS protests, the Obama campaign and other Democrats have stepped up their attacks on Romney and other Republicans. One top banking executive who raises money for Obama, discussing fundraising efforts on the condition of anonymity, said that reports of disaffection with Obama are exaggerated and overblown. He said that a strong contingent of financiers in New York, Chicago and California remains supportive of Obama and his economic policies. Obama retains a core group of supporters on Wall Street who are central to his fundraising efforts. About a third of his top 40 fundraisers, who have helped bundle together $500,000 or more in contributions, hail from the finance sector, including big names such as former New Jersey governor Jon S. Corzine of MF Global, hedge-fund manager Orin Kramer and UBS executive Robert Wolf. Obama’s chief of staff, William M. Daley, was also vice chairman at J.P. Morgan Chase before coming to the White House in 2011.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Mohamed Mohamed, and Iqbal Shahzad were detained by the Metropolitan Police under the Terrorism Act, after flying into Heathrow Airport. The Muslim men were arrested close to the Kenyan border with Somalia, over suspected links to Somali militants, but were not charged in Kenya. It is expected that they will be questioned by South Wales Police. The father of Mohamed Mohamed, of Somali descent, alerted police and flew out to find his son. It is understood no charges were brought against Mohamed and Iqbal Shahzad, who is of Pakistani descent, by the Kenyan authorities. They were deported after questioning by the police's anti-terrorism unit. The father of the British-born Somali said that he traveled to Kenya after his son disappeared from the family home in Cardiff. Abdirhman Haji Abdallah alerted the High Commission in Nairobi as well as the Kenyan police and gave them a photograph of his son. Security forces arrested his son Mohamed very close to the Somali border along with his friend. Abdallah said that he was reunited with his son in Nairobi where police said they would not prosecute as he had not crossed the border into Somalia, but would refer the matter to the British authorities. A joint statement from the Muslim community in Cardiff said that the Somali and Pakistani community in particular, and the Muslim community in general, are anxiously waiting for the arrival of the pair. The arrests came against a background of an air and ground assault by Kenya into Somalia. Somali militant group al-Shabab has warned Kenya to withdraw its troops from Somalia, or face bloody battles. Kenya had responded to several recent cross-border abductions it blames on al-Shabab.

A survey has found that 48% of OWS protesters would vote for Obams's re-election, even though 51% of the protesters disapprove of his job performance. In addition, one-third of the protesters considers themselves to be Democrats while none consider themselves Republican.

And the impact would be felt most heavily by the lowest income groups. Those are some of the estimates from the Tax Policy Center's analysis of Cain's proposal, which has helped make him a leading contender for the Republican 2012 presidential nomination. While some key questions about the 9-9-9 plan remain unanswered, the Tax Policy Center's analysis is one of the first to take a comprehensive look at its potential impact. Cain's 9-9-9 plan would replace much of the current tax code with a flat-rate system: a 9% individual income tax; a 9% corporate income tax and a 9% national sales tax. Estate and gift taxes would be eliminated, as would the payroll tax, and most tax credits, deductions and exemptions. In terms of investment taxes, capital gains would be tax-free, while dividends would be deductible to businesses paying them out but taxable at 9% for investors who receive them. According to the Tax Policy Center, households with incomes below $30,000 would have, on average, between 16% and 20% less in after-tax income than they do today. By contrast, households making more than $200,000 would see their after-tax income grow by between 5% and 22% on average.

In a study, researchers found that African-Americans donate almost exclusively to family members for living kidney transplants, as compared to whites. The retrospective study compared medical records of all former successful kidney donors at Wake Forest Baptist between Jan. 1, 1991, and Dec. 31, 2009. The purpose of the study was to characterize differences in donor and recipient relationships between African-American and white living kidney donors. "African-Americans are overrepresented in the dialysis population and they are underrepresented among those who receive living donor kidney transplants, the best option for long-term treatment of kidney disease," said Amber Reeves-Daniel, D.O., lead author of the study and medical director of the Living Kidney Donor Program at Wake Forest Baptist. "The more we can understand what contributes to people's willingness to donate one of their kidneys, the better job we can do of educating potential living donors about the need and allay fears about the risks." The study sample consisted of 73 African-American and 324 white living kidney donors. African-American donors were more likely to be related to the transplant recipient than whites. Individuals were considered to have a familial relationship if a blood relation existed or if there was a familial relationship, including in-law relationships. In addition, the study found that African-American donors were more likely to donate to their parents compared to whites, and were slightly less likely to participate in parent-to-child donation. By comparison, white donors were more likely to be unrelated to the recipient than African-American donors. Reeves-Daniel said one of the most surprising findings was that the majority of African-American kidney donors were men and younger than the white donors. "Adult African-American dialysis patients are typically younger than white dialysis patients and this may explain, in part, why African-American children are more often able to donate to their parents," she said.

A medical researcher speculates that there may be a connection between prostate cancer and sprinting ability in African-Americans:

It is hypothesised that seemingly disparate and unrelated phenomena clustering in persons of African descent living in the Americas such as outstanding sprinting ability and high prostate cancer incidence and mortality are in fact related and emerge from enhanced testosterone responsiveness in descendants of African slaves surviving the transatlantic trade in Africans. It is postulated that the ability to have survived the middle passage was positively correlated with greater responsiveness of the androgen receptor to its primary ligands dihydrotestosterone and testosterone, and that slaves possessing more responsive androgen receptors experienced a survival advantage engendered by the enhanced anabolic effects which accrued such as increased red cell mass and therefore greater oxygen carrying capacity and tissue oxygen delivery enabling these slaves to tolerate stifling conditions in the hull of the slave ship, increased lean muscle mass and therefore greater surface area to volume ratio resulting in easier ability to dissipate heat and remain cool, and increased skin thickness and sebum production resisting the macerating effect of lying in admixed bodily fluids below deck. These androgen effects as well as others would have produced a survival advantage under the severe selection pressure created by the inhumane and physiologically challenging circumstances under which the slaves were transported from the interior of the African continent and West Africa to the 'New World'. This would result in a population shift favouring increased androgen receptor responsiveness in descendants of African slaves populating the Americas and a corresponding geographic and racial distribution of androgen related phenomena such as sprinting prowess and prostate cancer. African-Americans having the highest prostate cancer incidence rate and the Caribbean having the highest prostate cancer mortality rates in the world are consistent with this hypothesis as is the observation that the 10 fastest men and 9 fastest women of all time are exclusively the descendants of West African slaves who survived the middle passage. It is predicted that as yet undiscovered as well as known biological correlates of enhanced androgen receptor responsiveness such as relatively short CAG-repeats in the poly Q tail of exon 1 of the androgen receptor gene will be more prevalent among African-Americans and Afro-Caribbean peoples than among West Africans. It is also predicted that African-Americans and Afro-Caribbean peoples will have relatively shorter CAG-repeats in the androgen receptor gene compared to West Africans.

Rodriguez, Jr. is the Latino convicted back in 2006 for the kidnapping, rape and killing of University of North Dakota college student, Dru Sjodin. In Federal Court in Fargo, N.D., a Northwestern University law professor working on Rodriguez’ behalf filed a motion to have facts in the case reconsidered. The 298-page petition for habeas corpus basically urges U.S. District Court Judge Ralph Erickson to reconsider the conviction and death sentence. Professor Joseph Margulies, who has represented other death row convicts, claims that Rodriguez’ defense team at trial was ineffective and failed to uncover the defendant’s mental illness. In 2006, a Federal jury in Fargo convicted the 58-year-old Rodriguez, Jr. for the kidnapping, rape and killing of Dru Sjodin. Her disappearance from a Grand Forks shopping mall back in 2003 set off a massive search across eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota. Now, the same court that convicted Rodriguez will be asked to review the petition to see if a hearing will be ordered to consider any new evidence on the defendant’s behalf. Legal experts at William Mitchell College of Law say a petition for habeas corpus is generally viewed as a last ditch effort to avoid the death penalty. Past counsel for Rodriguez exhausted other appeals. A three judge panel of the 8th Federal Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to deny a new trial. Later, the defense team lost an attempt at appeal when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The petition filed in Fargo by Professor Margulies seeks to paint the trial team as ineffective, because it failed to uncover evidence that Rodriguez is mentally disabled. Reached by telephone, Sjodin’s mother, Linda Walker, is not surprised that the petition for habeas corpus is being made. Rather, Walker is frustrated that money is being spent to prolong the life of her daughters’ killer and not on work to prevent more victims. “It’s frustrating knowing that money could be spent on trying to retrieve somebody who’s out there that’s missing or that needs this sort of funds to protect themselves or others,” said Walker.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

The owners of the Zisalek parlor in the Mea Shearim neighborhood had put up posters asking people not to consume the snacks in public and installed separate entrances for men and women. But religious zealots from the ultra strict Sikrikim sect did not believe the measures went far enough and broke in during the night to vandalize the premises. The Sikrikim are named after a Jewish group which 2,000 years ago fought against Roman rulers and suspected Jewish collaborators. They wear masks to hide their identity and strike mainly at night. Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up about 8% of Israel's 7.7 million population. With an average of eight children per family, they are a fast-growing population. Many live below the poverty line and tend keep to their own towns and neighborhoods. Mea Shearim area is small, less than half a square mile, and home to about 30,000 residents considered among the most tight-knit and reclusive of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jews. Other stores in the neighborhood, where men wear traditional black garb and women bare little but their face, have had their windows broken, locks glued and foul-smelling liquid smeared on walls. Sikrikim attacks have also been reported at Beit Shemesh, a mixed secular and religious town with a growing ultra-Orthodox community, about half an hour's drive from Jerusalem. The latest target there has been a religious girls' school. The Sikrikim who reside near the school object to the way the girls dress. Since the school year began in September 2011 they have regularly picketed outside shouting out at the students, most of them younger than 12, that they are promiscuous.

A critically injured toddler is fighting for her life after she was run over twice and ignored by passers-by in China. Yue Yue, two, remains in a coma after the horrific incident was captured on surveillance camera in a narrow street in Foshan city, Guandong province. After days of treatment, the little girl has regained the ability to take weak breaths with the help of a respirator and some feeling in her arms. Her heart beat has also stabilised, but her life remains in danger and there are concerns she may have suffered extensive brain damage.

A British politician is unhappy with how few Protestants go to college in Northern Ireland:

The independent MLA Jim Allister has said Northern Ireland's universities must do all they can to encourage more admissions from Protestant students.

He was responding to figures from the Department of Employment and Learning which showed that just a third of the 35,000 students attending local universities are Protestant.

There are considerably more Catholic students at the two universities.

Mr Allister described the imbalance as "alarming".

"Of particular concern to me is the Jordanstown campus whereas there are 3,800 students from a Protestant background from NI, there are 6,600 from a Catholic background," he said.

"The Jordanstown and Ulster University situation is worsened by the fact that there's a total imbalance in terms of the number of students from the Republic of Ireland.

"Whereas at Queen's there is essentially an equilibrium between the same number of students from GB and the same number from the Republic - when you go to the University of Ulster, it is five times the number from the Republic as opposed from GB.

"There are 2,800 students from the Republic of Ireland studying at the University of Ulster which suggests to me that the UU for some strange reason is being more successful in recruiting Republic of Ireland students that it is in recruiting local Protestant students from the controlled sector."

Mr Allister said he would be calling on the local universities to address the imbalance to ensure the situation does not worsen.

He said another big concern was Protestant children not attaining the grades they needed to get into university.

"We have had research that shows that," he said.

"I certainly would like to see that addressed and more and more people from both communities, particularly from that neglected community, the Protestant boys' community in working class areas, being encouraged to work themselves up through the system.

"Whether, in turn, that eventually affects the university figures, we will see.

"But whether it does or doesn't off its own right, it requires to be addressed."

A spokesman for the University of Ulster said it does outreach work to encourage students from all backgrounds to study on its campuses.

He said: "It is a sad reflection of society here that the religious composition of our student population should be a matter for public comment.

"The University of Ulster is open to everyone and provides a first class educational experience for its students."

The figures were released by Employment and Learning Minister Stephen Farry following a question tabled by MLAs Jim Allister and Gregory Campbell.

Less than a fifth of students at Magee College in Londonderry are Protestant.

There are considerably more Catholic than Protestant students at both Queen's University and the University of Ulster.

Overall, there are fewer Protestant school leavers but those who go to university are much more likely to study in the rest of the UK.

I am not sure what Jim Allister wants the universities to do. Discriminate against Catholics? Isn't that what led to the creation of the IRA?

According to the survey, only 36% say that they think Obama's policies will succeed, while 59% say that his policies will fail, up 12 points from 2010 and nearly double the 32% who said in 2009 that Obama's policies will fail. "A record high level of pessimism that may not be surprising when six in ten predict the economy will be bad shape a year from now," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Only 13% say the economy is in good shape now; only 39% believe it will be in good shape next October."

The article spends a lot of time on the "paternalistic" French colonial doctors who went around innoculating Africans against diseases and occasionally, when the power went out, they could only boil their hypodermic needles instead of fully sterilize them. But, eventually, it gets to how AIDS became a massive disease, and, reading between the lines, you'll see that AIDS was more or less the disease of the "1960s on the March:" decolonialization, the UN, the Black Power Duvalier regime in Haiti, gay sex tourism, drugs, gay lib and so forth.

Curtis Lopez, 45, was arrested in Charlotte, North Carolina. He is suspected of killing his wife, 51-year-old Jane McQuain. McQuain's 11-year-old son, William, remains missing, said Capt. Paul Starks, a police spokesman in Montgomery County, Maryland. "We'll have a better idea on Tuesday when we'll get Curtis Lopez back to Maryland. We had two detectives try to talk to him, but his attorney said no," Starks said. Police are still looking for the boy and have searched various locations, the spokesman said. Though police described the search as active and intense in a statement, Starks said they must also be realistic. "He could be deceased, but we're still holding out hope," the spokesman said. An Amber Alert has been issued for William McQuain, who is described as a light-skinned African-American, about 5 feet tall and weighing about 85 pounds. The case began when a friend of the boy's mother reported her missing, saying he had not seen her for about two weeks and that he was concerned. When detectives arrived at the woman's home in Germantown, they found Jane McQuain dead in her bedroom. Her son was not there and the woman's vehicle, a Honda CRV, was gone. It was found later. Police think that Lopez may have had a residence in North Carolina, but they have few other details linking him to the area.

Monday, October 17, 2011

The body of Sean Hines was found by his stepfather when he came home to their apartment. Hines was stabbed to death. When police showed up, the black teen's mother, Yvonne Hines, 52, answered the door holding a bloody sponge. She was charged with manslaughter after being taken in for questioning, the NYPD said. Mother and son had a history of violence. Both faced assault charges in June 2011 after they attacked each other. Sean Hines hit his mom in the head with a hammer during that incident, officials said, and his mother cut his face. Sean Hines recently graduated from high school and hoped to go to culinary arts school, neighbors said. His mother is a rowdy presence, neighbors said. "She was always slamming the door, always in the hallway yelling," said Malika Cooper, 21. Yvonne Hines wouldn't give her son a key to their apartment, and often kicked him out, neighbors said. "She was screaming at him to find a job," Cooper said of one recent blow up.

Like many swaths of Detroit, Keith Wicks' historic Indian Village neighborhood has remained largely dark at night after vandals destroyed transformers in nearly every streetlight pole that powers them. On a recent rainy day, Wicks, 64, a retired GM engineer who has lived in Detroit for decades, watched as city Public Lighting workers put new transformers at the top of the aging wooden poles. Just days later, those streetlights were out — again. The growing lack of public lighting has become a troubling problem for cash-starved Detroit, where entire stretches of neighborhoods and thoroughfares — such as portions of the Southfield Freeway — are feeling the effects. The war to keep the lights on in Detroit is a serious one. Thieves, antiquated equipment and a lack of funding have made it impossible for city officials to catch up to the problem. City officials estimate that 15% - 20% of the 88,000 lights in the Motor City are not working, and they acknowledge the figure could be as high as 50% in some neighborhoods. Providing lighting to the city costs $10.7 million annually. And often when they are fixed, they break down weeks and months later — or thieves steal the high-grade cable for its copper materials.

Also, family members of African Americans with kidney failure have an increased risk of developing kidney failure, which suggests that genetics may play a role in this skewed risk between races. Researchers have identified variants in a gene called APOL1 that may play a role. The APOL1 gene creates a protein that is a component of HDL, or good cholesterol. People inherit two copies of the APOL1 gene - one from each parent. If they inherit only one copy with a variant, they are resistant to infections caused by a parasite endemic to Africa. For this reason, the variants are common in individuals with African ancestry. Unfortunately, if both copies of the APOL1 gene contain a variant, an individual has an increased risk of kidney failure.

The paper also debunks the myth that Islamic terrorists and suicide bombers are loners and psychopaths. Instead, the security service says that 90% of them can be categorized as sociable and have a high number of friends. The 200-page document is called Radicalization Of Muslims In The United Kingdom – A Developed Understanding. Two-thirds of Islamic terrorists in Britain have criminal records. The study says that the mean age at which a Muslim becomes radicalized is 21.6 years, while anyone between the ages of 16 and 32 is regarded as vulnerable.

Benjamin Boateng, 27, whose father is Lord Boateng, crawled under a quilt and assaulted the girl after she had passed out at the end of a night of clubbing in the West End. She had the shock of her life when she eventually woke up and discovered what was happening. The girl, 22 at the time of the sex attack on September 19, 2010 had been out clubbing with her friend Frances and ended up in the VIP area of the Jet Black club in Tottenham Court Road. Frances was also a friend of the son of the club’s owner, Ryan Bish, and they were given champagne and vodka and later invited back to Bish’s Battersea apartment to continue the party, Kingston Crown Court was told. They arrived at the property and 15 or so minutes later Boateng, whose father was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, arrived with his friend. The group carried on drinking and talking until the woman, having had a lot to drink, lay down on the sofa and fell asleep, the court heard. The group eventually moved into another room but a business associate of Bish’s, Mark Rowe, fell asleep on the second sofa in the same room. Heather Norton, prosecuting, told jurors that when the woman had fallen asleep she had been uncovered - a detail confirmed by Rowe - but when she woke up she had been covered with a quilt and Boateng was on top of her sexually assaulting her. Her underwear had been pulled down, Norton said, and as she was disorientated she initially thought it was her boyfriend. When she realized what was happening, she pushed him off, shouted who the hell are you? and ran sobbing into the next room, jurors heard. In her video interview with police the woman, who is now 23, said that she was sick four times the next day and was only persuaded to go to police after phoning her mother.

Minority children are less likely to wear a car seat belt, putting them at greater risk of severe injury. For some reason, minority parents are less likely than white ones to put much emphasis on their children's safety when driving. Could this be due to the fact that blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans have lower average IQs than whites?

The strength of the OWS demonstrations likely lies in the fact that it is a predominantly white movement - like the Tea Party groups. Adding blacks and Hispanics to these groups would likely weaken them and lead to their disintegration. In the real world, it is homogeneity, not diversity, that is true strength.

When deputies checked on Vargas' immigration status, it was learned that he is in the United States illegally from his native country of Guatemala. Vargas is being held in the Marshall County Jail. In addition to the sexual abuse charge, he is being charged with willful failure to carry alien registration under Alabama's new immigration law. An ICE detainer also has been placed. Vargas' bond on the sex offense is set at $10,000. He is being held with no bond on the immigration offense.

The project came about after a congresswoman, Zury Rios Montt, started a petition to draw attention to the fact that hundreds of women were sexually harassed on buses every year. According to the Association of Transport Users in Guatemala, of the 1500 complaints received annually about passenger abuse, more than a third of them involve the sexual harassment of women and girls. The fleet of buses marked for women only has received a great deal of support. Passengers say that they feel safer and hope the project will soon extend its operation beyond rush hours. The service is for women and all children under seven.

In every presidential election since 1992, Hispanics have given 60% - 70% of their votes to the Democratic candidate. Hispanics, largely poor and working class, are beneficiaries of a cornucopia of government goods — from free education to food stamps to free health care. Few Latinos pay federal income taxes. Most immigrants now come from Third World countries and do not bring the academic or professional skills of European-Americans. The decline in academic test scores here at home and in international competition is likely to continue, as more and more of the children taking those tests will be African-American and Hispanic. For though we have spent trillions over four decades, we have not closed the racial gap in education. White and Asian children continue to outscore black and Hispanic children. In addition, the Hispanic illegitimacy rate is 51% while the black rate is 71%. Sociologist Robert Putnam found that the greater the racial and ethnic diversity in a community, the less social capital there is — i.e., people in diverse settings are far less disposed to cooperate for social goals. They retreat into enclaves of their own kind. Putnam found social capital at the lowest level he ever measured in Los Angeles, the most diverse community on earth. Yet, by 2042, the demography of every American city will approximate that of Los Angeles. In short, a non-white America is a Third World America.

The Hill poll found that only one in three likely voters blames Wall Street for the country’s financial troubles, whereas more than half — 56% — blame Washington. Moreover, when it comes to the political consequences of the protest, voters tend to believe that there are more perils than positives for Obama and the Democrats. A plurality believe that the Occupy Wall Street movement will hurt Democrats and Obama in the 2012 election. Even those whose sympathies lie on the left of center seem unsure about the likely political repercussions. Just half of all liberal likely voters — the group most likely to blame Wall Street for the recession — and fewer than half of all Democrats believe the protests will help their side in 2012. The split on the question of apportioning blame for the nation’s economic travails corresponds closely with voters’ political ideologies: More than 7 in 10 conservatives blamed Washington for the recession, while more than 5 in 10 liberals blamed Wall Street. But self-identified centrists, importantly, appear to be siding with the right on economic issues, with nearly half blaming Washington for the recession. The difference also reflected voters’ views of Obama: Among those who “strongly” or “somewhat” approve of Obama, most blamed Wall Street, while those who “strongly” or “somewhat” disapprove of Obama blamed Washington.

In 2011, the most populous countries are China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Nigeria. In 2050, the most populous countries are predicted to be India, China, Nigeria, the United States, Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Since the greatest population growth is in the Third World, this bodes poorly for our planet's future. Since Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh are all Islamic countries, we are likely to see an increasing amount of Muslim terrorism over the coming decades.

Buchanan has a chapter on the end of White America discussing the decline of whites as a percentage of the total U.S. population. Liberals and even many so-called conservatives have tried to argue that this is a good thing but Buchanan points out that far from being an American ideal, the Founders and all prominent Americans from Washington to Lincoln through Dwight Eisenhower all praised American homogeneity and had racial views on blacks that would be considered “white supremacist” today. When it comes to the issue of race and intelligence he points out that as most kids do not have the athletic ability to play high school sports, or the musical ability to play in the band, or the verbal ability to excel in the debate, not every child has the academic ability to do high school work.

Officers were investigating a report of squatters in a building when they found three men and a woman in a 15-by-15-foot room behind a steel door that was chained shut. Thomas Gregory, 47, Eddie Wright, 49, and Linda Ann Weston, 51, the ringleader, were arrested in connection to the horrific discovery as it emerged that the victims may have been kidnapped for their Social Security checks. Charges of criminal conspiracy, aggravated assault, kidnapping, criminal trespass, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment and related offenses have been filed against the African-American trio. Weston was convicted more than ten years ago on a murder charge in her native Philadelphia. Gregory is also reportedly from Philadelphia, while Wright is officially listed as homeless but originally from Texas. The victims have the mental capacity of 10-year-olds, police said.

Because so many Hispanics refuse to learn English, some white English-speakers in Texas can't get work because many firms now require their employees to speak Spanish in order to deal with immigrant customers.

In addition, 80% of U.S. population growth between now and mid-century will be from new immigrants and their U.S.-born children. Also, over the course of their lifetimes, most immigrants will receive more Social Security benefits than they pay in Social Security taxes. Many legal immigrants enter the country at fairly advanced ages. These folks do very well by Social Security. Some work for as little as ten years and yet receive 70% - 80% of the benefit received by comparable native-born workers who have contributed to the system over their entire working lifetime. George Borjas, the Harvard economist, finds that Social Security is an important factor in the decision to come to this country. Older immigrants know that if they do not work long enough to qualify for Social Security, a safety net of welfare programs is there for them.

Precisely why the black infant mortality rate is so high is a mystery that has eluded researchers even as the racial disparity continues to grow in cities like Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Boston. Recent studies have shown that poverty, education, access to prenatal care, smoking and even low birth weight do not alone explain the racial gap in infant mortality, and that even black women with graduate degrees are more likely to lose a child in its first year than are white women who did not finish high school. Research is now focusing on stress as a factor and whether black women have shorter birth canals.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Joshua Guzman, 18, was charged with assault and child endangerment after hitting the child's head twice against the wall. Seth Azemi, aged 14 months, was declared brain dead after spending a week on life support when he was admitted to hospital with two skull fractures. His mother, 25-year-old Stephanie Soto, left Seth in the care of her younger boyfriend. Court papers say that Guzman was walking with the baby in his arms when he swung his body around, hitting the child's head against a bedroom wall. Then, when he shut the door as he was leaving the room, he struck the boy's head in the process. Police say that he repeatedly banged the child's head against the wall. A medical examiner is still working to determine the cause of death but depending on the results the charges may be upgraded to murder. Soto was a no-show at a family court hearing over the custody of her two other children. Soto's two other children, a five-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl, were removed from her custody by the city Administration for Children's Services after Seth's death.

The black cashier, who police said had previously served a decade for manslaughter, beat the women so badly that one suffered a fractured skull and broken arm in the shocking attack, which was captured on a customer's cell phone and then posted to YouTube. Police have charged the cashier, identified as Rayon McIntosh, 31, with felony assault charges, along with criminal possession of a weapon. Both black women were charged with menacing, trespass and disorderly conduct. He is being held at the Manhattan Detention Complex on $40,000 bail, according to the Department of Correction website. The drama began when the two customers — Denise Darbeau, 24, of Queens, and her pal, Rachel Edwards, 24, of Brooklyn — entered the popular fast food spot and began giving McIntosh a hard time, police sources said. In the video, Darbeau, 24, of Queens, is clearly heard cursing at McIntosh after the cashier told her he had to scan a $50 bill to make sure it was authentic before he would give them their food. An agitated Darbeau is seen slapping McIntosh across the face, prompting him to lunge forward and shove the two women. Darbeau leaps onto the counter and clears the other side while Edwards retreats to the other end of the restaurant, according to the video. Suddenly, McIntosh reappears on the video, brandishing a metal rod, which he slams onto Darbeau's head. The video, which has audio, is peppered with patrons screaming and wailing in horror and the chilling sound of the metal rod repeatedly whipping through the air and hitting Darbeau and Edwards. "Stop it! Stop! Stop! Oh my God!” one woman is heard screaming. “Someone call police!” Fellow workers can be seen on the video unsuccessfully trying to restrain McIntosh. Sources say that McIntosh ordered his assailants to stay down, and belted them each time they tried to get up. The continued beating is partially hidden from the camera by the counter. The two women were taken to the hospital. Darbeau suffered a fractured skull and broken arm which required surgery, according to court documents. She is in stable condition. Edwards suffered a deep cut. McIntosh served more than a decade in prison after being convicted of shooting and killing Oshan Litchmore, 17, a classmate at Bronx's Evander Childs High School in 2000, when he was only 19 years old. The two teens were outside Macy’s at the Galleria Mall in Westchester when they got into an argument. The fatal bullet passed through Litchmore and hit an eight-year-old passerby in the leg. McIntosh, who presently lives in the Bronx, was sentenced to 10 to 12 1/2 years in prison. He was paroled in March 2011 after serving 11 years, and has been working in the Village McDonald's since then, according to police sources.

The 115-page pocket-sized book, which will outrage many Muslims and non-Muslims, says a Muslim man can have sex with all of his wives at the same time. Under strict Islamic tradition a man can have up to four wives if he can provide for them all. The club prompted an outcry from women's groups and Islamic religious authorities when it was established in June 2011, claiming to have 1000 members. Malaysia's Minister for Women, Family and Community Development, Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, asked government officials to monitor the club to ensure it would not muddle the minds of Malaysia's younger generation. But Shahrizat said that the government could not restrict the club's activities, saying we are after all a democratic country. Among organisations that condemned the club was the Wanita Malaysian Chinese Association, which passed a motion describing its advice to women as an insult to their basic human rights. In its foreword the book says studies showed that women only gave their husbands 10% of what men desired of their wives' bodies. It contains explicit sex details, including fondling of a breast, and one chapter deals with how sex becomes worship. In June 2011 the club's vice-president, Dr Rohaya Mohamad, prompted criticism when she advised women to behave like a first-class whore while in the company of their husbands if they wanted their marriage to succeed. At the time club members said they planned to set up chapters in other Asian nations, including predominantly Muslim Indonesia. Malaysian media have reported that the club has links to a religious cult banned by the Malaysian government 20 years ago. The book is circulating in Malaysia at a time when radical Islam is expanding across Asia through a movement called Hizbut Tahrir, which is attracting many middle-class Muslims, including businessmen, lawyers and mothers. Hizbut Tahrir wants to unite all Muslim countries in a globe-spanning bloc ruled by strict sharia law. It is operating openly in Australia.

The city of Detroit has high unemployment, and no one has a tougher time finding work than an ex-con. So Detroit recently held a job fair strictly for ex-cons. More than 200 jobs were available, and no one who had not been convicted of a felony was eligible to attend. More than 1,200 attended and many wound up with employment. Julian Pate, the Director of Education at Focus: HOPE, a Detroit nonprofit which helps train candidates, claims that helping primarily black men between the ages of 18 and 24 who have been incarcerated benefits society.

The analysis reveals that Hispanics, who were hit hardest in terms of employment and wealth by the recession, also experienced the largest drop in birth rates since the economic crisis kicked off. From 2008 to 2009, the birth rate among Hispanics dropped 5.9%, Pew found. Blacks saw a 2.4% drop, and whites had a 1.6% decline.

Ahmed Faraz distributed Islamic extremist books and videos in a bid to encourage attacks by Muslims. Kingston Crown Court heard that the ringleader of the London suicide bombings owned material distributed by Faraz and his business. The Birmingham University graduate denies 30 charges of distributing or possessing terrorism-related material. Max Hill QC, prosecuting, told the jury that Faraz, 32, was not accused of being part of a specific plot. Hill said: "This case is about the distribution of books, DVDs and other material that we say represents steps along the road to radicalization of Muslims to engage in violent terrorist attacks against the military and civilian populations of countries around the world, including the UK. The case is also about the ways and means of solidifying that radicalization. This is about priming people for terrorism." The jury heard that at the heart of the case was a bookshop and online business in Birmingham called Maktabah al-Ansar. Police raided properties linked to the business and Faraz in 2007 and 2010 and seized large quantities of material that expert witnesses say is designed to encourage violence, terrorism and martyrdom. The material included videos of hostage-takings and beheadings, said Hill. The jury would watch heavily edited versions so that they could understand how the films had been designed to radicalize the Muslim viewer. Hill told the jury that police had found that some of the material distributed by Maktabah had been in the hands of men behind Britain's most serious plots, including Mohammed Sidique Khan, the leader of the 2005 London suicide bombers. Some of the men jailed for life for the foiled 2006 airline bomb plot also had Maktabah material. Hill told the jury that an expert witness would take them through hundreds of pages of Islamic texts and demonstrate how Faraz had adapted them to provide a clarion call to terrorist violence.

The department issued a news release warning parents that their children are at risk to Mexican cartels and have been since 2009. Several incidents involving U.S. teens and Mexican drug cartels recently prompted the statement, Steven McCraw, the department's director, said. "In '09 we started seeing that happening with the bridge cases, when the cartels started getting our teenage students to move drugs across the bridge," McCraw said. "Texas teenagers provide unique compatibility to the cartels. They're U.S. citizens, they speak Spanish, they're able to operate on both sides of the border and they're expendable labor." Because they're juveniles, it's not likely that they'll be charged by the federal prosecutors, he said. Recently, Texas officers caught a 12-year-old boy in a border county driving a stolen pickup truck containing more than 800 pounds of marijuana. Also, two other juveniles from the Rio Grande Valley were lured into Mexico and kidnapped, eventually being released after a ransom was paid by the families, according to McCraw. "There's some indication that they were subjected to the temptations to working with the gangs and cartels," he said. Teens are sometimes offered as little as $50 to act as drivers for the cartels or the local gangs who support them, McCraw said. The Texas border region represents 9.7% of the state's population, yet has 19.2% of the state's juvenile felony drug referrals and 21.8% of the state's juvenile felony gang referrals, according to the release.

A minority Muslim sect says that it still faces persecution from Islamic extremists. The Ahmadiyya religion does not believe, as most Muslims do, that the prophet Mohammed was the last messenger of Allah – a theological difference so serious it led to Ahmadis declared as non-Muslim heretics in Pakistan. In 2010, 93 Ahmadi worshippers were slaughtered by Islamic terrorists while they prayed in mosques in Lahore. In Britain, Ahmadiyya Muslims, whose main mosque is in Morden, were being openly insulted and discriminated against by Islamic bigots who targeted their livelihoods and even their political candidates. The evidence pointed specifically to the Tooting Islamic Centre, where its imam, Suliman Gani, had invited hardline clerics in March 2010 to speak about the danger of the Ahmadiyya Muslim religion spreading in the face of mainstream. The clerics included Abdur Rehman Bawa from the Khatme Nabuwwat, a organization which claims to provide awareness about the Ahmadiyya religion. At the conference, Bawa urged worshippers not to do business with Ahmadis. Following that conference, Gani admitted he had pleaded with a halal meat shop owner not to sell his business to an Ahmadi because he believed that Ahmadis could not be trusted to sell legitimate halal meat. There were also leaflets entitled “Deception of the Qadiani” found in Tooting and an Ahmadi butcher won an employment tribunal case in which he was found to have been sacked because he would not renounce his religion.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Thirty years into the HIV/AIDS epidemic, gay and bisexual men of all races remain most affected by HIV in the U.S., said Tracy Elliott, executive director of AID Atlanta. For instance, in 2009, he said white men accounted for the largest number of new infections - 11,400 - followed closely by black men – 10,800. In Georgia, there were 1,366 new HIV diagnoses in the same year. Of those, 49% were among gay men, with blacks accounting for 74%, whites 21% and Hispanics 5%. Among gay white men, Elliott said, the distribution was very consistent, about 3,200 new infections for those aged 13 to 29. But among black gay men, the latest numbers show the distribution was weighted toward those 13 to 29 with 6,500 new infections.

Switzerland, the very modern symbol of a peaceful country, might have gone another direction, were it not for the way the differing groups (French, German and Italian) and religions (Catholic and Protestant) have been physical grouped within the borders of the small country. Those of German descent make up the largest group, taking up most of the north, central and eastern parts of the country while those with Italian backgrounds live predominately in the south; those of French descent have settled mainly in the west. Not surprisingly, those of the Catholic faith live predominately in the southern and middle parts of the country, due to the influx of those of Italian descent, while those of the Protestant faith live mainly in the rest of the country. In Switzerland, areas of the country are partitioned into what are known as cantons, which are similar to states in other countries except that each has much more autonomy than is usual. Researchers found that the main reason the groups all manage to get along, is because they are separated from one another. Each canton is comprised of almost all the same types of people, essentially ruling themselves, thus, there is very little overlap. The research does shed a rather bright light on the idea that simple separation can lead to peace. Maybe we should try this here in the United States as a way of dealing with our nation's racial problems?

The forces will ultimately go to Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I thought that one of the reasons Obama was running for president was to stop the United States from invading foreign countries? Can we really afford another military intervention with the current state of the U.S. economy?

Long before Cain was running for president and getting attention for his 999 plan, the residents of SimCity 4 — which was released in 2003 — were living under a system where the default tax rate was 9% for commercial taxes, 9% for industrial taxes and 9% for residential taxes. Do we really want a president who gets his policies from games?

Phillip Machemedze, 47, was able to work in Britain for seven years as a carer for those with learning disabilities and on a unit dealing with drug and alcohol addicts. He was able to secure the jobs by showing a letter from the Home Office, a National Insurance number and birth and marriage certificates. These documents were not checked properly in a series of failures. There was outrage earlier in 2011 when he was allowed to stay in Britain to protect his human rights. An immigration court in May 2011 ruled he must be allowed to stay because he could face mistreatment if sent back to Zimbabwe. He has admitted breaking immigration rules – but was told he will not be jailed if he volunteers for just half a day a week for the next six months. Machemedze – who is now jobless and trying to claim benefits – admitted two charges of obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception. Judge Julian Lambert deferred sentencing for six months, but told him he had to work for half a day a week at his local Pentecostal church. Machemedze worked as a bodyguard in Mugabe’s feared Central Intelligence Organisation. An immigration hearing heard that he committed savage acts of extreme violence, including torturing numerous political opponents of the Mugabe regime. He smashed one victim’s jaw with a pair of pliers, before pulling out one of their teeth. Another victim was electrocuted, slapped, beaten and punched unconscious and a woman victim was taken to an underground cell where she was stripped naked and whipped. Machemedze admitted putting salt in her wounds. Richard Posner, prosecuting, told Bristol Crown Court that Machemedze arrived at Gatwick Airport from Zimbabwe in July 2000 and was given a six-month visitor visa which banned him from working. But he stayed in Britain, working illegally as a carer at the adolescent unit within The Priory, a drug and alcohol recovery hospital, in Stapleton, Bristol, from June 2005 to May 2010. He also worked as a support worker for the Milestones Trust, a learning disabilities and mental health charity from May 2003 to May 2010. In April 2005 bosses at the Milestones Trust were tipped off that Machemedze was working illegally but after Machemedze showed them the Home Office letter the matter was dropped. The court was told that in the seven years he had worked Machemedze took home a net income of around £151,000. Jane Chamberlain, defending, said that her client had indefinite leave to remain in the country and was allowed to work but was now unemployed and seeking benefits. Machemedze’s wife Febbie had been granted asylum. I wonder if the British realize, or even care, how ridiculous they look in the eyes of the sane world when they let scum like this stay in their country?

In the United States and in European countries, 70% - 80% of murders are solved. Rio de Janeiro's public defenders' department says that the Brazilian state has accumulated more than 60,000 unsolved murders in the last 10 years. In fact, 24,000 of the victims haven't even been identified.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Detectives in Gweru, Zimbabwe, seized 33 used condoms from a suspect vehicle following reports of attacks on men seeking lifts in the town, as well as Harare and Mashonaland West. Reports in Zimbabwe have described the alarming trend of male hitchhikers being offered lifts, but then being drugged and driven to secluded spots by female attackers. The men are then forced into sex with the women, sometimes unprotected and at gunpoint, before the female rapists collect their semen and dump victims by the roadside. Three women have been arrested after police found 33 condoms in a vehicle in Lower Gweru. Midlands police chief Senior Assistant Commissioner Charles Makono said the women came under suspicion after asking officers if they could retrieve the bag of condoms from their car, which had just been involved in an accident. The three women, named as Rosemary Chakwizira, 24, Sophie Nhokwara, 26, and Netsai Nhokwara, 24, all from Mkoba 4, Gweru, were immediately arrested along with the male driver on suspicion of multiple counts of indecent assault. The driver also faces culpable homicide charges after the fatal accident in which a pedestrian was run over and killed. The local police station in Gweru was besieged by an angry mob who wanted to see the arrested trio.

The sentencing caps a prosecution, marked by secret wiretaps of Rajaratnam and his associates, that shocked the investment world. The Sri Lanka-born fund manager once stood atop a $7 billion New York hedge fund, but was found guilty of running a network of informants who supplied him with corporate secrets. The sentence was lighter than the 19-and-a-half year minimum term that prosecutors had sought, and was only slightly more than the 10 years handed down recently to a former Rajaratnam employee at the now-shuttered Galleon Group hedge fund. The judge, in rejecting calls for a tougher sentence, said Rajaratnam, 54, faces imminent kidney failure due to advanced diabetes. He referred to a report from the defence describing Rajaratnam's doctors as recommending dialysis soon. The report said that the doctors had begun the process for obtaining a kidney transplant. Rajaratnam was the key figure of a sprawling criminal case, unveiled in October 2009, that touched some of America's top companies, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Intel Corp, IBM and the elite McKinsey & Co consultancy. Prosecutors have placed him in a dubious pantheon of Wall Street power players such as takeover specialist Ivan Boesky and junk bond financier Michael Milken, principal figures in a mid-1980s insider-trading case. Both men served about two years in prison.

A viral video capturing the savage beating of a disabled woman in front of a California doughnut shop has led to an arrest in the case. Video of the Sacramento incident, which reportedly occurred on October 1, 2011 was originally uploaded to video-sharing site WorldStarHipHop.com. After receiving numerous calls and tips relating to the video, Rasaan Zawadi, 21, has been arrested, Sacramento police said. He was charged with assault with a gang enhancement. The woman is seen wandering in front of Eric’s Donuts shop as the thugs approach her, taunting her and spitting in her direction. Then, without warning, one of them throws a punch, as the cameraman and others are heard laughing. She stands stunned before flying into a blind rage, raising her hand and chasing the assailant, but she’s unable to catch him as he runs off. While she stops to catch her breath, another man approaches. Apparently mistaking him for the original attacker, she springs up to confront him. The second man, much stockier than the first, gets into a fight pose, as the woman cowers in fear. But she stands back up to him, saying, "why you slapping me, huh?" He responds by throwing a sudden left hand with such force that the woman falls to the ground. His face is clearly visible as he walks off. The Smoking Gun reported that the clip was first posted to the World Star Hip Hop site by "Dylan G The Kid," but was later changed to "Rhekidd." The video has more than 600,000 views on the World Star Hip Hop site, and 116,000 on LiveLeak.com. After police were called, the suspects reportedly fled to a nearby apartment building. Cops are examining the video to see if they can identify the suspects.

Whether it is through leaflets handed out in High Streets or small ads in local newspapers, witchdoctors and traditional African spiritual healers are becoming ever more prominent in Britain. The work many of them do is harmless enough, but there is evidence that some are involved in the abuse of children who have been abducted from their families in Africa, and trafficked to Britain. According to Christine Beddoe, director of the anti-trafficking charity Ecpat UK, a cultural belief in the power of human blood in so-called juju rituals is playing a part in the demand for African children. Figures compiled by Ecpat, combined with those of the Metropolitan Police and Ceop, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, show that at least 400 African children have been abducted and trafficked to Britain and rescued by the British authorities. Testimonies from many of these children have revealed that once they arrive in Britain, they are exposed to violent and degrading treatments, often involving the forced extraction of their blood to be used for clients demanding blood rituals. According to a US State Department report, Uganda has become one of the main source countries for children to be bought and smuggled to Britain. Some 9,000 children have gone missing in the country over the past several years.

The cerebral cortex is the outer layer of the brain covering the cerebrum, and is responsible for cognitive functions, such as language, memory, attention and thought. "In babies born preterm, the more the cerebral cortex grows early in life the better children perform complex tasks when they reach six years old," said study author A. David Edwards, DSc, of Imperial College in London. "The period before a full-term birth is critical for brain development. Problems occurring at this time have long-term consequences, and it appears that preterm birth affects brain growth." The study found that the faster the rate of cerebral cortex growth in infancy, the higher their scores were on the developmental and intelligence tests as children. A 5% - 10% reduction in the surface area of the cerebral cortex at full-term age predicted approximately one standard deviation lower score on the intelligence tests in later childhood.

The plastic signs bolted to trees in the Brooklyn neighborhood of South Williamsburg read, in Yiddish, “Precious Jewish Daughters: Please move over to the side when you see a man cross.” Parks maintenance workers removed 16 of the signs because they were nailed to public-owned trees, a violation subject to a $150 fine. The signs were part of a campaign by a rabbinical group, the Central Rabbinical Congress, that has published other decrees, including one in June 2011 forbidding women to wear tank tops.

Earl Seth David, also known as Rabbi Avraham David, fled to Canada in 2006 when he learned that the federal authorities were probing him for running an operation that churned out fake paperwork for thousands trying to enter the U.S. illegally. He was arrested in Toronto by local police, federal prosecutors in New York said. He will face an extradition proceeding. David ran the scam out of his Manhattan law office and had 26 co-conspirators who helped to create phony sponsors for thousands of illegal aliens, according to an indictment filed in Manhattan Federal Court. "Earl David and his many cohorts corrupted the immigration process through a carefully orchestrated scheme that was stunning in its scope and audacity," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said. "They allegedly reaped millions of dollars for filing tens of thousands of fraudulent applications." Among those arrested was Robert Salamon, a Department of Labor employee who pleaded guilty previously and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. The mill charged clients fees of up to $30,000 and concocted sponsorship for them by making fake pay stubs, bogus tax returns and even phony experience letters.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Police have charged 26-year old Adolfo Martinez with forcible touching and sexual abuse after Martinez groped an 18-year old woman near a subway station. Police initially ruled out the possibility that the attack was a part of the series of sexual assaults that have taken place in Brooklyn neighborhoods. However, authorities are now saying it is indeed possible and that Martinez fits the geographical pattern. Recently, Federico Chamorro Yax was arrested for a similar assault where he attacked two women also in Sunset Park. He is also being tied to a September 2011 attack where he forced his hand up a woman's skirt near his Bensonhurst home.

The girl was lured on a shopping trip in Lahore by a friend, before she was driven 120 miles to Tandianwalla and raped by the friend's uncle in January 2011. Two days later, she was forced to sign papers consenting to marriage with the man and beaten for refusing to convert from Christianity to Islam. She was then held against her will for eight months, before managing to escape and contact her family. The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has said that the rapists have not been arrested because of their affiliation with a militant Muslim organisation - the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. It claims that the police have refused to order a medical check-up on the girl, and have warned her parents that it would be better for them to hand over the girl to her "legal" husband or a criminal case would be filed against them. An investigation into the kidnapping found the girl's father reported her disappearance in January 2011 and made complaints against her abductors, but police took no action for eight months. In September 2011, the girl - who has not been named for legal reasons - called her family from Tandianwalla and told them she had been abducted, but had escaped and was hiding at a bus stop. The girl's parents travelled to the town and rescued her, before taking her to a local magistrate to give a statement. The rapists then contacted the police through their religious group and produced a marriage certificate that claimed to show one of them was married to the 12-year-old. As a result of their complaint, the Christian family has gone into hiding as members of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba are searching for them. The group claims the girl is pregnant, but her mother has denied this is true. The AHRC said that police never asked the religious group how a 12-year-old could be married. The legal age for marriage in Pakistan in 16. It seems that the Punjab provincial government is patronising banned militant organizations.

Not only do they have a higher risk of developing breast cancer but they also a higher risk of developing a very aggressive form of breast cancer. Researchers recently discovered that Ashkenazi Jewish women are more likely to have certain alterations in the genes "BRCA1" or "BRCA2" than women in the general population. As many as 1 in 40 Ashkenazi Jewish women (2.65%) might carry one of these alterations, which could put them at higher risk for developing breast and ovarian cancer.

For five years, the former congressman headed one of the largest churches in the country in Queens while simultaneously running a small college in Ohio - pocketing hundreds of thousands in salary and benefits from both places. Now Wilberforce University faculty members say that he bled them dry, setting the storied black Protestant college on the road to financial ruin. “He came in and looted the place,” said Robert Fitrakis, a lawyer for the faculty who has filed a complaint with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. The faculty is seeking to oust the current board and Flake’s handpicked successor, charging that they have breached their legal and financial duties. The faculty members claim that after Flake became president in 2002, his compensation and perks skyrocketed, he hired cronies as high-priced administrators, he failed to raise enough money and he insisted on a pricey contract with the Princeton Review, where he sat on an advisory board. In his last year at the college, 2008, Flake pulled down a total compensation package of $340,100, which included his salary of $145,833 and a retirement benefit of $149,267. He also had a $45,000 expense account. Almost all of Wilberforce’s revenue, about 90 percent, comes from taxpayer dollars, including federal financial aid and government grants. And Flake earned the outsize salary while working at the college only one day a week, said a faculty member.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Population-based estimates indicate that the incidence of malignant phyllodes tumors is 2.1 cases per million women, with the highest frequencies in Hispanic women. Hispanics have a higher percentage of borderline and malignant tumors and tend to have larger tumors and higher mitotic rates, the rate at which cells in the tumor are dividing.

If we look at sales figures which are in the public record, sales at Godfather's Pizza, adjusted for inflation dropped over 40% from the year before he took over to his final years. It is hard to imagine that profits went up at this time. Godfather's Pizza fell from the 5th largest Pizza chain when Cain took over to the 11th largest Pizza chain by the time he left the company 15 years later.

Cain bought Godfather's Pizza in a management leveraged buyout. In general, management leveraged buyouts are a device that company managers use to defraud stockholders of company profits. In this case, I believe the only reason there is no fraud in this case is because Cain was unable to produce any profits in the years he was CEO at Godfather's pizza. In other words, it was a fraud scheme that failed due to Cain's inept management.

Compared with Europeans, African-Caribbean men presented significantly higher serum levels of measured bioavailable testosterone, 4-androstenedione, and estrone whatever the age group, of 5-androstenediol in those 40 to 49 and 50 to 59, and of testosterone and dihydrotestosterone in those aged 40 to 49. In contrast, European men aged 40 to 69 showed significantly higher serum levels of dehydroepiandrosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate.

Monday, October 10, 2011

The mutation tweaked one type of sugar molecule, Neu5Gc, produced by early hominids, the first great apes. About 2 million or 3 million years ago, just as human ancestors Homo ergaster and Homo erectus emerged in Africa, a genetic mutation halted the production of this molecule, and the pre-human immune system began to recognize it as a threat. As a result, some hominids would no longer have been able to mate and produce offspring with other populations, potentially driving early humans apart from other apes. "Over time, this incompatibility would reduce and the eliminate individuals with Neu5Gc," study researcher Pascal Gagneux of the University of California, San Diego, said in a statement. Cells communicate with other cells using sugar molecules that stud the outsides of their membranes. One type of sugar molecule is sialic acid, which is found on all animal cells. Until about 3 million years ago, the common ancestors of humans and other apes shared Neu5Gc, a type of sialic acid also known as N-glycolylneuraminic acid. Then, something changed. A genetic mutation stopped production of Neu5Gc in human ancestors, possibly because this mutation helped the hominids avoid strains of malaria that still infect chimpanzees today. Instead, human ancestors with the mutation made a different version of the sialic acid, Neu5Ac. Here's where the immune system comes in: The human ancestor body began to see Neu5Gc as a threat and mounted an immune response against it. That response would have had a major effect on early human reproduction. Researchers tested the idea by exposing chimpanzee sperm, with its Neu5Gc-bearing cells, to human antibodies for the molecule. Sure enough, the antibodies killed the chimp sperm. Female mice engineered to have an immune response to Neu5Gc likewise produced fewer offspring when mated with Neu5Gc-positive males. In other words, a tiny change in one little molecule could have helped drive populations to diverge from one another, as only Neu5Ac-positive ancestors could mate with other Neu5Ac-positive ancestors, and those human ancestors without the mutation were unable to produce as many offspring.